


Quid Brevi Tempus

by Bookwormsarah



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookwormsarah/pseuds/Bookwormsarah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How does Tosh spend her oh so rare days off?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quid Brevi Tempus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deaniebtvs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deaniebtvs/gifts).



> Written for tw_femficfest over on Livejournal

[Tuesday, after eight straight days at work] Sometimes Toshiko likes to pretend she’s a tourist. After almost five years in Wales she knows the backstreets and sewage systems better than the museums and viewpoints (apart from the beach four miles away where the rift drops things at least three times a year. It is a beautiful spot and the artefacts have all turned out to be toys from the 41st-42nd centuries. Somewhere in the future there are a lot of grumpy toddlers. The team fight over who gets the trip to the bay when the rift alert pings).

There are some amazing things to see in the Cardiff area. St Fagans Museum and Caerphilly Castle make her feel both ordinary and alien all at once, and she enjoys poking through the smaller, old fashioned museums too. She is trying to train herself out of looking at every unusual object as a potential rift deposit, although she did once remove a live Maddaxian splinter shell from an open shelf without the custodian seeing. It was a miracle that the person who had sewn the museum identification number to the fabric cover hadn’t been patched, but some people are just lucky. The box in her backpack might look like Tupperware, but it can contain a blast and seals against biohazards. These days she never leaves home without it, and it proves very useful when transporting strong cheese or smoked fish.

***

[Friday, three days] Occasionally she will go to the small theatre half a mile from her flat. The university drama society put on plays there, as do a number of local groups. Mostly the standard is high, although she is currently hurrying home after an excruciatingly bad production of Death of a Salesman. By the end of the first act she had been ready to give Willy Loman a helping hand. She rarely takes risks and books in advance, knowing how uncertain work can be. Three weeks ago it was an Agatha Christie play and the week before that was a late night improv theatre, and she laughed until she cried. The girl at the box office is a student in her teens, serving an apprenticeship to get into the cool crowd. She is pretty and eager and makes tentative recommendations for upcoming performances, and once or twice Tosh thinks she might even be flirting.

***

Tosh tried to go away on holiday once [Saturday, thirteen days]. She was eighteen months into her time at Torchwood and Jack had okayed it when she tentatively asked. She wasn’t going far (passport still in Jack’s safe, she assumes he will return it when the five years are up), just a week in a city that isn’t Cardiff, her phone switched off (in theory). She had just crossed the Severn Bridge when it rang and she spent half an hour in a layby talking Suzy through the backdoor of a locked down computer. She hears Jack yelling in the background as she looks out across green fields, a smile on her face. It is nice to be needed, and even nicer to escape for a few days. Four days (and nine phone calls) in she let her battery run down while she explored a Roman villa, and then worried until she returned to the car and could plug in the charger. She left it switched on for the rest of the holiday.

***

Sometimes [Saturday, six days] she sees the others, but by tacit agreement they don’t speak. Gwen tried once or twice in the early days, but Tosh used her old trick of disappearing into the crowd, learned at school and perfected over years. Just a faint pang of guilt as the friendly eagerness in Gwen’s eyes turned to puzzlement as she scanned the crowd. Ianto understands. A few seconds of eye contact, a millimetre of eyebrow twitch, and he’s gone.

 

***

And then there is Betty [approximately once every two months, Charity Shop on Wednesdays or the Museum on Fridays]. Nearly ninety she speaks a dozen words of Japanese, learned from her grandson who teaches in Tokyo, and is far more worldly wise and savvy than Tosh feels she will ever be. They met in a computer shop where she was waiting in line while a young sales assistant tried to persuade Betty that she needed an expensive installation and service package for her new printer. Betty’s eyes laughed at Tosh while she explained to the young man that she had worked undercover for MI5 and was perfectly capable of working this basic technology. Later, over cakes in the department store café, she confessed it was all lies, but she had been using computers for a long while. She volunteers two mornings a week, and Tosh stops in for a chat when she can. Betty never asks questions but is happy to listen when Tosh feels like talking. The older woman tells Tosh wild tales of growing up in the East End of London in the 1930s, of antifascist marches, of seeing Gandhi, and of her WAAF days. Tosh remembers a wartime dance too, and tells a confused tale of something that happened to her ‘grandmother’. Betty is careful not to react when the pronouns change from ‘she’ to ‘I’.

***

Tosh has never been one to feel lonely, and there are some days [Tuesday? Monday? Sunday? Twenty three days straight] she spends almost entirely in her flat. The night before she changes her bed linen, takes a shower, and sleeps in clean pyjamas. When waking (usually early, habit is a frustrating thing) she rolls luxuriously in the bed, burrowing in and rubbing her face in the pillow. Sometimes she sleeps again, but more often she reads or listens to a cd or the radio. Tiredness and tension slowly depart as she revels in the peace. When she starts to feel restless, she runs a long, hot bubble bath, smoothes facemask in place (an unexpectedly successful Christmas present from Gwen) and soaks away every last trace of work. Later she will walk to the shops for food – anything made fresh and not a takeaway – and spend the afternoon on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and a silly dvd.

***

One day [Thursday, maybe Wednesday, fifteen days] she takes a train and a bus and another train to a small town with a crumbling sandstone cross by the market place. So many names, and the one she was looking for, missing. She finds the church he described to her weeks ago, decades ago. There are war graves in one corner, and she has come prepared. The British Legion were selling wooden crosses and the name and dates and written in firm black ink. Leaving the church she notices a fingerpost directing her to the museum, fortuitously open on a weekday afternoon. She pays her entry and is quickly absorbed in the packed rooms.

 

The surfaces are pristine and the air smells of polish, but dust motes sparkle in the air. A small case of fossils, a cabinet of pot shards and bones, a plan of the local castle (now a mound and half a ditch) and a room of more recent history. A pair of desks from the junior school (could he have sat there?), streets names from roads now demolished, a George Cross awarded to a local man, and a set of photos of ‘the lads’ joining up. It takes a long while, but there at the back – Tommy. Leafing through a scrapbook she sees a photocopied article about an elderly woman who has been campaigning for executed soldiers to receive a posthumous pardon. Two more items show her, celebrating when the pardon was finally given in 2006, and standing proudly beside the Roll of Honour where her late uncle’s name had finally been inscribed. The cold pain in Tosh’s chest melts into warmth. He has been marked, recorded, noted and remembered. Her brave, handsome hero meant something to someone else too. He will always be in the museum as the happy, eager boy, waving his hat with a crowd of others, safe from the knowledge of the future.

***

There are the dark, dreadful, aimless days [Friday, nine days] when she cannot settle to anything. These usually occur after someone has been angry, hurt, or when Jack gets that terrible look in his eyes and orders them away. Books and films cannot hold her attention; passers by in the streets crowd her and jangle her nerves. Eventually she finds her way back in, seeking comfort in programming and system checks, logic and coding. Most of them feel that pull occasionally, the need to be back in their safe space, somewhere they don’t have to hide. Sometimes it is Ianto who finds her first, announcing his presence with an unobtrusive cup of tea at her elbow and a shared smile. Sometimes Gwen wanders in, restless and uncertain, looking to Tosh who has been there longer and can translate the mood. Owen comes in with a crash, a clatter of instruments and a loud curse when he knocks into something, and sometimes it is a warm hand on her shoulder and the unmistakable presence of Jack. Solitude has never worried Toshiko, but sometimes solidarity is what she needs.


End file.
